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Posts Tagged ‘cost-effective’

Jump-Start the New Year with Business Resolutions

Friday, January 8th, 2010

We’ve all made our New Year’s Resolutions: eat healthier, save money, join a book club, spend more time with family. Having this firmness of purpose is what is so exhilarating about resolutions. Why stop at personal resolutions, why not apply them to your business? This year make determined resolves for your business.

It’s a New Year. A clean slate, a fresh start. New goals, objectives, ambitions, and metrics. While we slowly climb out of this recession, now is the time to focus on cost-effective solutions that will jump-start the New Year and allow you to make the most of your resources and get you to where you need and want to be. The New Year allows you to refocus, update expectations, set new benchmarks and ultimately strategize how you will reach your aspirations for the year. Where to begin?

Start at your vision statement. Where do you see your business headed? How do you want it to operate? What will it be in the future? What are your core values and how can those attributes make your vision a reality? After defining your vision and clearly articulating it, move on to your mission statement.

Compose your mission statement with your vision in mind. Ask yourself what the main strategic intent of your business is. What are your essential competencies? By understanding your purpose and aim as a company, and using your attributes to your advantage you can set focused, targeted goals.

New Year’s Resolutions have a bum rap for always getting thrown out the window around week three. This year, resolve to stay on track.

Mission Statements Inlaid with Vision

Mission Statements Inlaid with Vision

The Cents (and Dollars!) of Using Online Marketing

Monday, November 2nd, 2009

piggy-bank-on-money-md1As we constantly move towards a society where daily tasks such as paying the bills, ordering food and shopping for clothes are being performed online, new opportunities to approach, reach and target your clients are beginning to emerge. Online marketing has a number of benefits, especially for small business owners. It’s fast, efficient, environmental friendly, but most of all, it’s cost-effective!

Besides the obvious benefits of eliminating mailing and printing costs, here are some important factors to take into consideration.

The two-way communication process. The feedback from your consumer makes it easy to adjust and update your online campaign. If you notice that certain copy or images needs to be changed, this is an easy fix. Imagine doing a print campaign and realizing along the way that you’re not getting the results that you’re looking for. The cost and time it would take to make the necessary edits would probably mean a financial setback for your business.

To receive feedback from the consumers while doing an offline marketing campaign requires the consumer to mail or call. People don’t have the time to do this and valuable information gets lost. Online marketing allows clients to have an ongoing communication with the actual company, and most importantly the company can very fast adapt according to their audience.

Another way to track the results of your campaign is to set up SEO keywords. The campaign can get customized and constantly updated based on your consumer’s reaction and feedback.

There are numerous communication channels to be utilized in online marketing. The primary channel is  the web, but also e-newsletter, social media platforms audio and video. Speaking of email marketing, there’s nothing easier for a potential client to forward and/or share the email that is being sent out. Today, an increasing number of companies are integrating social media with e-marketing. TopRank’s online marketing blog featured an interesting post about the so-called “Share to Social” (S2S) link tonlinemkt3hat can be imbedded in an email marketing campaign. When sending out an email simply include this link, which tells the receiver to instead of just sending or forwarding the email, he or she should also make sure to share it with more people by utilizing social media platforms. Links to the platforms are imbedded in the email, which makes it easy for the receiver to spread the word about your products and/or services!